


Flight

by lonerofthepack



Series: Taken 'verse [11]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Chased through the woods, Gen, Hunted For Sport, Kidnapped, Percival Graves whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27407053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack
Summary: written for the 2020 Whumptober prompt: Toto, I Have a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore: Lost | Field Medicine | MedievalIf there’s any possible way to spin being hunted for sport by militant Dark separatists out to be something positive, he’s waiting for it to become apparent. They’re going against Grindelwald’s wishes to do it, so maybe that’s the plus — Grindelwald will thin his own ranks when he finds Percival’s battered corpse dumped in a midden somewhere down the mountain. Maybe.Part of the Taken 'verse
Series: Taken 'verse [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951963
Kudos: 9
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Flight

**Author's Note:**

> Toto, I Have a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore: Lost | Field Medicine | Medieval
> 
> Eh, I fudged it for all of these prompts, have another escape attempt for giggles. What's a linear plot line anyway, right?

Well. It’s probably a hopeful thing, that he’s lost, and running barefoot through the woods — the last escape attempt had gone so well up to the very last moment, perhaps this clusterfuck was a sign of impending success.

If there’s any possible way to spin being hunted for sport by militant Dark separatists out to be something positive, he’s waiting for it to become apparent. They’re going against Grindelwald’s wishes to do it, so maybe that’s the plus — Grindelwald will thin his own ranks when he finds Percival’s battered corpse dumped in a midden. Maybe.

It’s fucking freezing, of course, early spring is not exactly warm in the Austrian alps, or where-ever the fuck he is, dodging the snow when he can in favor of bare fucking rock and sharp pine needles and trying to get as far into the thick conifer forest as fast as his legs could carry him. 

The burn of his lungs is infuriating — gone fucking soft, trapped in a tower getting roughed up by Grindelwald’s thugs, can’t even go for a bit of a head-long dash down a mountain without getting complaints. Years of fighting-fit conditioning, wasted down to something skinny and soft and light-headed under a bit of hunger, a bit of torture.

The crack of an apparation was distant but audible — he can’t hear the shout of a spell, but he does hear what bombarda does to a tree, a couple hundred feet behind him, and it certainly doesn’t inspire him to slow down. He dodges hard to the left, going for what cover there is, zig-zagging as madly through the thick trunks as he dares, achingly grateful for the deep bed of pine needles that softens the sounds of his running and the branches that hide him from sight. He can’t feel the pain of it yet, the nicks and cuts that were shredding open his feet; they’ll be agony later, he’s sure, but for now he runs.

Another tree explodes, in a different direction--a flock of ravens, or something that shrieked and cawed in hundred-fold fury as they were disturbed, takes to the sky several hundred yards away.

There’s a slight break in the trees, just coming out of the gloom— it’s got the shimmer of wards, barely distinguishable from the sweat burning in his eyes; he’s got to squint to be sure.

Once he is, still dodging, still running — another blast, somewhere behind, far enough behind, and the soap-bubble glimmer of wards half-blinding him along with the sweat and the blood from where he’s taken a branch to the face —

He might have managed to pull up enough from his running, to stop, for the gorge lurking right behind the wards; he _almost_ manages to stumble to enough of a halt, scrambling to catch his balance back away from an abrupt, dizzying drop.

Close is for exploding snap and bludger misses. He doesn’t manage it, not with a stunner square between his shoulder-blades, and clawing blindly at the edge as he goes over it just drags a small avalanche of stone and mud down with him.

Percival wakes. It’s a shock, to wake, but the pain he wakes in isn’t a surprise. Fingers, toes, knees, elbows, hips, shoulders, neck - he can feel them all, and they’re all on fire.

 _Good enough_ , he thinks, and wiggles everything in the same order. Swears — one of the legs is searing to move, and the opposite shoulder makes him lose time. 

It’s dark, when he wakes again; or not fully dark, there’s streaks of gold-pink across the sky, but dark here, in a crack in the world. He’s not entirely certain how he isn’t dead, either from the fall off a mountain or the spell that pushed him or the cold that’s biting at him.

He manages, with a lot of swearing — a _lot_ of swearing — to push himself up to sitting, leaning against a rock and panting through the shock of how badly it hurt.

The leg isn't broken, it's stabbed— there's some manner of branch broken off in it, deep enough to be agony and death-by-infection if he doesn't get help, but keeping him from bleeding out handily enough. He manages, with the one arm that works despite the moan of bruising, to get his shirt half-off, to approximate a shoddy, medieval sort of sling so that the arm that isn’t working — broken collarbone, or a dislocated shoulder, one of them, he isn’t sure which, only that it _hurts_ — will stop _screaming_ on every hitching breath with a pain that makes his eyes stream.

Why it hurts worse than the leg, he couldn't say.

The leg... probably a lost cause: impossible to tourniquet, even if he had the strength or the supplies to do it. Difficult even to bandage; ripping the shirt isn't easy, and he only gets a stringy handful to press around the stick. He’s going to have to get up on it, and walk at least a few steps — there’s an outcropping of rocks that will shelter him when his first attempt at apparation fails, and hopefully he doesn’t splinch badly. Hopefully he can get to that shelter at all — he doesn’t want to be found if someone comes looking, and looking up, the only way they’d see him is straight down. 

Crawling — the arm, shoulder, whatever, won’t allow it, and he doubts the branch in his leg will, either.

He doesn’t splinch— he doesn’t actually manage to move at all. 

He does lose more time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much for reading!


End file.
